


Out Here

by rivendellrose



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/M, Gen, Loneliness, Looking for Redemption, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9134995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: LJ user Voleuse requested to see loneliness unspoken and a silent toast, anddidn'twant to see too much angst.  I hope I managed to accomplish that to your satisfaction!After she leaves B5 to captain the Hyperion, Susan runs into a familiar face. Has a follow-up fic inThe Nineteenth Autumn.Written and posted on Livejournal in November, 2006, for the B5 "rare pairings" ficathon.





	

The first time the crew of the Hyperion found him, there was almost nothing left of the man Susan Ivanova had once known. He’d traded the robes of a Ranger for some ill-fitting mismatch of fabric so stained and worn she couldn’t tell what color it had started out, and his face had sunken back into itself, mimicking the way he curled up on the table in her med lab. All she’d seen through the mud and the bruises was a Minbari, probably male, and definitely beaten, starved, and near death. Most likely, she thought, he was beyond what little medical information a the ship had on file about his species.

“We’d better call Delenn, see what she can tell us about--”

“No!” His voice was so hoarse it was nearly a cough, but his agitation was unmistakable. He reached for her arm, shaking off the nurse who tried to hold him down, and something familiar sparked in his eyes. “Not Delenn. Please...”

He passed out again, then, but under his near-panic, she had recognized the reverent way he spoke that name, and finally put this together with the odd awkwardness underlying the last time she’d spoken with John, when he confided that Delenn was in the process of seeking out a new aide for the time being, at least. “Lennier. What the hell have you done with yourself?”

The med team worked around her while they stabilized him as well as they could. The last thing she’d wanted was to see a familiar face out here in the middle of nowhere, but now that she had one, she found she couldn’t easily abandon it. 

* * *

On the third day after they picked him up, Susan’s comm chimed with a summons from medlab. Thankfully they were still in transit in the middle of the nowhere-ass-end of the universe, so she was free to stop by almost immediately. 

“Our unexpected guest is awake, Captain.”

“Good.” Susan eyed her chief medical officer. “He give you any trouble?”

Doctor Asako shook her head. “He’s been a perfect gentleman. I only called because you said you knew him... figured you might want to have a little chat. It’s fascinating,” she continued, “I’ve never had a chance to examine a Minbari in a healing trance. All non-essential functions go down, and even the autonomic ones slow to a great degree, all so their body can concentrate as completely as possible on healing itself. I’ve heard of it, of course, but during the war there was never a chance...” Asako trailed off. “Well. Those were different times. I’ll leave you to your friend.”

Different times, indeed. Asako and the nurse went back to their duties and, on Susan’s word, there wasn’t a security officer to be seen in medbay. If their captain trusted this stranger, the crew was willing to accept that. Good for them. 

“You almost died,” Susan told Lennier as she sat down. No preamble, no delicacy - if he was looking for eloquent speeches, he’d been picked up by the wrong ship. 

Lennier simply inclined his head, a fractional gesture that probably still cost him pain. 

“How are you?”

He paused for a moment, really thinking about it. “Better.” 

“You still look like hell. Sound like it, too.”

“It is fortunate, then,” he rasped, “that Minbari do not believe in Hell.”

She couldn’t help but smile - at least he’d retained his dry sense of humor. “Neither do Jews, technically. Have they fed you?”

He raised his left arm, into which a pale fluid was draining from a tube. 

Susan snorted. “Let me put it another way - do you feel like you could take something real? It might help your throat, now that you’re conscious.”

He inclined his head again, and waited patiently while she pestered one of the nurses into giving her a packet of the insta-hot liquid meals they kept on hand for sick crewmembers, and poured it into a mug. It took a minute for him to get a good grip on the mug, but then he drank with slow appreciation. 

She didn’t ask what happened, and he didn’t volunteer anything. After he’d drunk the broth, he fell asleep again, and Susan left him in Asako’s care. She still didn’t call Delenn. Whatever had happened between them after that, it wasn’t her place to interfere.

* * *

On the fourth day she visited again, just long enough to see that he was sitting up and drinking more of the liquid insta-hots. When he said hello to her he managed a real nod, and didn’t sound nearly so much like he had gargled with engine-cleaner. The bruises on his head and hands looked like a Drazi political campaign gone worse than usual, but Dr. Asako seemed to think that was just the healing process working through, and he didn’t look quite as pale as before. With as light-colored as Minbari were naturally, he’d almost literally been grey. She told him so, and he looked slightly amused, but didn’t explain the joke. Typical. 

On the fifth day there were too many issues of shipboard maintenance and paperwork that required her attention to allow for a visit before the hour Asako refused visitors in her lab. On the sixth she was just thinking she might manage to slip down to medbay when her office door chimed and admitted a pale and still shaky Lennier, leaning on a cane but very definitely upright and functional. 

“Captain Ivanova, I wish to thank you for your hospitality.” He managed an awkward bow, resting his good arm across the handle of his cane so he could offer the familiar salute of the Minbari religious caste. “Doctor Asako has kindly said that I am well enough to be out of medbay.”

“What did she say about anything else?” Susan asked, hoping Delenn hadn’t been stretching the truth all those times she’d insisted that Minbari did not lie except to save another’s honor. Lennier’s slight frown seemed to confirm the statement - he’d clearly hoped that she wouldn’t ask quite so directly, and that he might manage with a lie of omission. 

“She is also of the belief that I should restrict myself to short walks, eat and rest frequently... and remain aboard the Hyperion under her supervision for at least another four days. I do not think that last is necessary, however - the next planet or outpost you find--”

“We won’t be docking anywhere for at least a week, Lennier, so you can forget about it. You’re stuck with Asako’s verdict whether or not you convince me otherwise. And I’d agree with her, anyway - Delenn would never forgive me if I let you off this ship without a full recovery.”

As Susan had predicted, Lennier tensed as soon as his mentor’s name passed her lips. “Captain...”

“I haven’t told her you’re here. And I won’t. Unless,” she added pointedly, “you do something stupid and manage to hurt yourself further. Although if you want to contact her...”

“No. Not yet.”

“Meaning you will soon, or...?”

Lennier hesitated, seeming to weigh his options. “How much have Delenn and President Sheridan told you about the... circumstances of my departure?”

“Nothing,” Susan admitted. It was tempting to lie, to see if she could wheedle more information out that way, but she wasn’t willing to break the tenuous friendship they’d built over the past five years in that way. “John seemed upset about something, and Delenn looked worried, but neither of them said anything specific.”

“I did something... I made a terrible mistake, Captain. Before I return, I must atone for my actions.” 

She was tempted to ask whether that was Delenn’s opinion or his, but decided it didn’t really matter. It didn’t fit her image of Delenn, demanding something like that, but if that was how he felt, it wouldn’t make a difference to point out that Delenn might not agree with him. Self-imposed exile was a familiar state for Susan Ivanova. And yet... “And you mean to do this by getting the snot kicked out of yourself?” 

From the way he stared, she could tell the idiom didn’t translate. 

“Never mind.” If he was determined to get himself killed in the process of earning his forgiveness... well. That did seem to be a Ranger way of doing things, by the few examples she’d seen. And that brought up a whole other pile of feelings she didn’t particularly want to deal with right now. “Just... don’t do something stupid, okay? There has to be a better way to deal with whatever’s got you out here.”

“With all due respect, Captain, I think there is not.” 

“Fine. Suicide, then. I guess they must cover that in your training, huh? Right up there with talking in riddles and using the fancy damned staff.”

“Marcus Cole followed the calling of his heart. His courage should be remembered with honor.” Lennier lowered his eyes to the table. “I only wish that my own choice in that regard had ended with such distinction.”

“Wha... oh.” So that was how it was, then. “You...?” Susan gestured vaguely. The word ‘love’ and her didn’t get along so well, and it sure as hell didn’t seem to like Lennier much better, if she was understanding things correctly. 

He nodded. His eyes stayed fixed on the table between them, as though to look up would be to acknowledge his part in the conversation. 

Susan took a stab at the obvious. “Delenn?”

As she expected, he nodded again. 

“And that’s the horrible thing you did? Look, Lennier, as exile-worthy offenses go, that’s really a pretty low-grade sin. It’s not like you were obvious about it...”

“That is not why I left.”

“Oh. And you’re... not going to tell me why you left, are you?” 

“No. It was not an action you can forgive.”

“Fine.” That statement could be read in a few ways, Susan realized, but... in the end, did it really matter? It wasn’t her place to demand an answer, and she was stuck with him either way, for the time being. Besides, she felt oddly disinclined to lose this rare shred of familiar company that had turned up unwanted on her doorstep. _Maybe we’re both gluttons for punishment, in our own ways_ , she thought bitterly. “Look, Lennier, I didn’t mean that Marcus wasn’t... I’m flattered by the way he felt. But I can’t condone what he did, especially not in the middle of a war.”

“Love... causes actions that would otherwise seem impossible to appear as the only solution, sometimes.” Lennier’s voice was quiet, barely loud enough to be heard even in the silence of her quarters. He looked up, then, and met her eyes with something almost like defiance. “I would gladly die to protect Delenn from harm. I cannot imagine a nobler or better death.”

“Yeah, well... I didn’t ask for that kind of sacrifice, thanks.”

“Neither did Delenn. She offered many times to let me leave her, before the war. But I knew that she needed me, and I will always do whatever I can to serve her. I think... you are like her, in that.” He smiled sadly. “You inspire devotion and service in those around you. You are a...” He paused for a moment, seeming to struggle with the words, and she realized suddenly how difficult it must be to have this conversation in a language that he couldn’t have learned all that terribly long ago. “’Great soul,’ is the closest phrase I know of.”

“’Great soul.’ Right. Fabulous. I don’t recall asking for that, either.” Susan sat back in her chair and let her head settle back against the wall. 

“There are worse things to be.” His voice sounded closer, now, and when Susan lifted her head again she saw that he’d moved around the table and stood almost directly beside her, now. “What you said about all love being unrequited--”

“Oh, for crying out loud. That’s not even...” Susan shook her head and stood up to look him in the eyes. “It isn’t about being worthy. It isn’t about fate. It isn’t about anything, it’s just... I don’t know. It just _is_. That’s how the universe works - there are lucky people, people who go through life with everything working for them, and then there’s people like us. And there’s nothing anybody can do to change it.”

He smiled a little. “On that, at least, we agree. And so... we are both out here?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Susan sighed. With all that he’d said, she supposed she owed him more of an explanation than that. “There’s just too many memories bound up in Babylon 5, you know? Too much... too many people who knew him, too many people who knew about how he felt and saw what happened. And too many things that would remind me.”

“The station itself seems alive with her,” Lennier agreed. 

“I wouldn’t go that far, but the sentiment’s close enough.” Susan sat back and watched him for a moment. She’d always thought of him, back on the station, as a little bit of a child, or a teenager at best... someone like Vir, who was just too young to have a strong grasp on the realities of the universe. She was aware that the Minbari was physically older than his friend, of course, but she’d also assumed that he’d been extensively sheltered in the temple where he’d spent his life prior to Babylon 5. Now an extra step entered into the mental equation - the poor bastard might very well have never been in love before. _Another damned virgin..._

“Maybe we can both start over, out here,” she suggested.

“Perhaps.” Lennier bowed politely, but he didn’t look any more hopeful than he had a moment before. And why should he? If he was convinced, as she suspected, that Delenn was the only person for him, that she was the only one he could possibly love... well, that was young love all over the place, and the kind that tended to get a person killed because they couldn’t imagine a better solution. 

“Thank you for your hospitality, Captain,” he continued. “I hope that one day I may repay it in some way.”

She only had a moment before he would leave again, and probably never speak of this again before he left, and impulse made Susan act. She crossed the small room in a few steps and bent down enough to press a kiss - quick and relatively chaste, but a kiss nonetheless - to Lennier’s dry lips. When she pulled back he blinked up at her, obviously shocked, and his hand came up to touch his lower lip. Thank God he didn’t ask why, Susan thought. He only stared at her - maybe a little her warily - for a moment, then bowed again and left the room. 

_Why?_ she asked herself for him, as the door closed between them. _Because maybe I missed my chance before. Maybe things would’ve been different if I’d been more impulsive. And because I doubt you’ll ever kiss Delenn, and nobody should live forever without just a kiss._

Maybe it was the wrong thing to do. She’d probably regret even that small decision in the morning, or the next time she stopped by the infirmary to check on him, and it was bound to be awkward if he ever asked about it, but for the moment, she felt content. It wasn’t much - it wouldn’t change a damned thing, for instance. But it was something. She took a bottle out of her desk and poured a small shot of vodka, raising it in a salute toward the door and her departed companion. He wouldn’t have appreciated a shared glass, so this was the best she could do for him, she figured, and tossed back the shot. At least one of them could get drunk and forget for a little while, and maybe her little gift to him would confuse him for long enough to grant a little bit of peace from his other demons.

* * *

On the twelfth day after they’d picked him up in the middle of nowhere, Lennier disappeared into the crowds at a spaceport in the Rigellan sector. His injuries were healed, Doctor Asako had given him a clean bill of health, and there wasn’t anything left to keep him, so Susan had bade him farewell the day they docked at the station, knowing he wouldn’t take long to slip away. She was familiar with the impulse. 

She drank another toast to him the next day, as they departed the station, and wondered if they’d cross paths again. It didn’t seem likely, but stranger things had happened in the universe... and he never had gotten around to asking her about that kiss. He’d given her a speculative look during their last conversation, though, and maybe his last bow had been a bit deeper than they had in the past. 

_It’s a good thing_ , Susan thought, _to keep a little mystery in the universe. Maybe that’s the best thing, for people like us._


End file.
